Best Practice posts, page 2 of 4.

Another Kick at QR Codes

There's been a lot of kicking around of QR codes since they first cropped up, complaints about their usability or a specific implementation (see WTF QR Codes for plenty of examples). I recently bumped into them in a discussion with some coworkers regarding 'short URLs' vs longer keyword-stuffed URLs…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted May 15, 2013
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Code Like a Butterfly, Perfect Like a Bee

After reading and practicing a slew of different methodologies in development projects I've noticed an interesting trend emerge, especially when working mid- to large-scale. In an effort to get an initial working example I'll write code very quickly, only slowing on occasion to optimize or clean up…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted May 3, 2013
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Mobile First, to an Extent

The most recent redesign of my website(s), which I started by rolling out a new home page late last year, is focused on some responsive ideals. There are some other changes as well, like removing unnecessary Javascript and sprucing up my framework, but the main goal is to implement responsive…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted March 18, 2013
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Midwest PHP Conference 2013

I haven't been too many conferences. DealerFire only pushed vendor conferences, fancy get-togethers in cities like Miami and Las Vegas where we all rubbed elbows with industry leaders and vied for customer attention. When I found out that Blue Door Consulting, my current place of employment, wanted…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted March 8, 2013
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Web Crawlers are Difficult

In my last post I explained what a web crawler was and some of the basic steps that someone could break up the logic into. I also dived into some of the difficulties I had when building out my own crawler. Granted, some of the difficulties were self-imposed: I was using PHP, had a limited timeframe,…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted March 1, 2013
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Building a Web Crawler

A web crawler is a script that goes out and crawls the web. Pretty surprising, eh? There are many crawlers out there, including the famous GoogleBot that attempts to index every site it bumps into and nefarious spambots that look for and exploit vulnerabilities. The logic behind them seems simple:…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted February 27, 2013
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Thoughts on UX Design

Recently I had the pleasure of reading Killer UX Design by Jodie Moule. This book goes over the basics of a user-focused design process, explaining some methods and practices to ensure user experience (UX) stays paramount throughout the discovery, concept, and delivery phase of a project. It really…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted February 2, 2013
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Forcing Cross-Layer Dependencies? You're Doing it Wrong.

There are a few things that frustrate me more as a web developer than finding cross-layer coupling in frameworks. I'm not just refering to 'view' or 'model' layers here… Front-facing parameters, module logic, and data storage structure are all unique layers of an application and should be…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted January 16, 2013
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Don't Focus on the SEO, Focus on the Human User

One of my least favorite phrases to hear while working on a website is 'do it for the SEO'. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a valid factor in website development. If Google and other search engines are having a difficult time crawling and understanding your content than it will be more…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted December 13, 2012
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Fuzzy Date

There is a big difference between human-readable dates and computer-parseable date information. People are much better interpreters of variable inputs while most programs pass around a standardized machine format. Since I'm a PHP guy the two formats I'm used to are MySQL DATETIME and the UNIX…

  • Category Web Development
  • Posted December 1, 2012
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Activity Stream

  • Read 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
  • Read Elantris (Elantris, #1) by Brandon Sanderson.
  • Read It by Stephen King.
  • Read Mistborn Trilogy (Mistborn, #1-3) by Brandon Sanderson.
  • Read Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson.
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